ABSTRACT
This chapter analyses the nature of the transformation—how it is conducted, the results it may spawn, and what role travel plays in the process—all within the context of travel films to and within the Balkans. Plato’s Parable of the Cave offers readers, even after 2,500 years, the opportunity to explore the way we human beings observe, interact, and come to know the meaning and impact of our surroundings. Personal transformation is a deep, powerful psychological state that involves and requires a complex trajectory of events to take place before the act is complete. The ancient world of the Eastern Mediterranean can be described as one of indubitable flux. Even in Plato’s time, sojourning around the Mediterranean was fairly common. The ability of cinema to provide the means of personal transformation may not be so farfetched; as noted film historian Robert Sklar indicates, there is the “capacity of cinema to improve the quality, indeed to transform the nature of human life”.
